The present invention relates to dimming ballast controls, and more particularly to a dimming ballast control integrated circuit for controlling a ballast driving a gas discharge lamp, for example, a fluorescent lamp or a compact fluorescent lamp.
Ballast control integrated circuits often are unnecessarily complex from the standpoint of the number of pins/connections necessary to implement a ballast circuit using the integrated circuit. Often, these circuits have over 8 pins and if a dimming function is included, a separate pin is required for both setting the dimming level and for feedback control to maintain the desired dimming level.
A ballast control IC that has a reduced number of pins and minimal external circuitry is desirable.